skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'll explain in more detail.

Let's say you need a communications channel with a 300 Mbit/s capacity. Shannon's theorem lets you know what kind of parameters make that possible -- namely, bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio. From there, I can make an informed decision about the entire signal chain. Once I choose the bandwidth, the theorem tells me the SNR so I can assign a noise budget to each of the components. If we assume that the noise is Gaussian, we can calculate total noise level as the root sum of squares of the noise levels of the individual components (don't forget to multiply by the gain). I can look at an amplifier IC's spec sheet and immediately say, "that's too noisy" or "that's overdesigned, I think I can get something cheaper".

And thanks to theorems we got from the field of real analysis and statistics, we know that the sum of Gaussians is itself Gaussian. So rather than sticking two components together and measuring the noise, or running a computer simulation, I can simply square, sum, and square root.

Each of these theorems reduces the amount of work necessary -- whether by pen and paper or by computer -- by an enormous factor. But if you can describe in similar detail how the computer program would work, I'll acknowledge your greatness.
Yes! Persistence is key. These days, everyone is too busy. If you really feel that talking about your startup would be an excellent fit for the blog, keep pestering them...in a good way.
Look above [1], they already have a JSON output for apps.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4634634
HTML5 Music Visualizer
Microsoft’s Windows RT Surface Tablet Speculated at $350 Pricing?
There are tons of Android Market website clones. How do they get their data?
Don't forget Dart!
This is much better, but since I am going full-on free software advocate at the moment I am obliged to complain that the wi-fi chip drivers are not open source :)
About your last point: your underpowered Phone is incapable of displaying the same level of game details as your xbox. Stop trying to compare a empty box with fans running at hundreds of watts with a phone trying to save power every seconds it runs not to overheat and burn in flames - this is a lost battle and there's no way a mobile device will be at the same level as 2006 home gaming hardware anytime soon.
> Why would any other browser need that glue code?

Because other browsers do not use WebKit, or at least chromium WebKit. Are you really asserting that no glue code is required on any other browser?

> The Pepper API is large but fairly straightforward

Where is the spec? You are not in the real world here.

There are plenty of differences between Gecko's audio APIs and Pepper's. If you really work on Gecko, mail me about this. I have reason to doubt your claims here.
The problem is that abstractions are designed to make hard problems harder. Someone who has never seen the type of problem that would make a given abstraction useful would not be able to understand it easily. If you work you're way up, then it becomes obvious.
http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4.verified/proof.pml

Keeping the above in mind, does it actually justify the billions of man hours spent on mathematics.
> The service won't actually be used for "micro-blogging" unless users are constrained by some limit, but 144 is too damn small.

The funny thing is that in languages like Japanese and Chinese, where one "character" contains a lot more info than one Latin letter, Twitter is used in quite a different way.
Oops: Microsoft sends takedown requests to BBC, Wikipedia, and the US Government
With stories like this and the recent Rdio announcement (http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/02/rdio-artist-commission/), I kind of wish I was still a professional musician.
> but I've been wanting to rant about this UI failure for a while now. And don't even get me started on Launchpad.

After five years or whatever of being tricked into clicking Launchpad links, I just noticed the other day that they have a "source" link on the top left corner. I had no idea they actually displayed source code. I always thought it was some crappy bug reporting product. Who knew?
The notion of a computer was a theorem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness
Satellite Images of the CIA's Secret Bin Laden Training Facility
go international for crying out loud
New York U. Turns to Free Site to Help Teach Computer Programming
Have been using Bitbucket for over 9 months now and find it really as good as Github for the features I need.

The pricing is such a lifesaver for small companies or hobby programmers that want some private repos.
I don't see how the discussion of rights is relevant, though I basically agree with what you said.
Well, I was speaking generally when I wrote that. I probably should have put in the word frequently to be more specific. I did not mean to imply that one day you will reach a point where you will never battle with a bug for over 4 hours again! But in my defense, I did write run into bugs and not bug.
how is this different from testflight?
Why didn't hey sew is own costumes and paint his own sets? Surely the content of the film is as important as the angle it is shot from.
As is often the case, the way to get the intuition here is to just work out the computation. Once you do that, it should all "click".
That's just a few parameters that you avoided having to tune, a few milliseconds of computer time. I'm not great, just questioning basic assumptions that have been handed down from a time before computers were around.
The difference between a beginner and an intermediate is the fact that intermediates understand that they have to get their hands dirty to improve. Whereas beginners want everything spelled out for them.
Something that struck me from your comment is that yes, there are more serious repercussions than others. The problem here is that the pressure and feedback from those repercussions is relative, and knowing this makes it especially difficult to accept tons of negativity. If a bug caused someone to die, and this was preventable (i.e. obviously your fault) then yes, you should feel horrible. Most of our jobs though, involve loss of money, not loss of life. The pressure to fulfill these tasks is therefore completely constructed. Success or positive feedback is simply that the people paying you continue to make money, the status quo continues.

Being optimistic or pessimistic isn't quite relevant when people's lives are on the line, I think it's more about being _realistic_. Everything can fail, and everyone makes mistakes. This is reality. When people can die, there is much more impetus to pay (time and money) for everything to be triple-checked and triple-redundant.

But in pretty typical software development, that money and time isn't there. And the feeling of knowing you could have done better, if only given a chance, is horrible and eats away at your resolve. Then you wonder, "well perhaps I'm not fighting strongly enough," or "People are coding for space shuttles, and I can't even get this page to load!"

I believe it's a human right that your individual problems are no greater than another's, because it's relative. If you feel about it strongly enough, then it's valid. Saying it's not because people's lives aren't at risk is invalidating the human right of pursuit of happiness.
BSD 4 Linux users by Dru Lavigne
Microsoft Sends DMCA Requests to the BBC, Wikipedia, and More
Hoping to make it a repo soon :)
Chrome Extension Turns Any Website Into a Chatroom
Bending Wires Is the Next Big Thing in Desktop Fabrication
I think the idea would be that this is in a https payment page of the client company who you would then choose to trust (or not) as implementing the payment frame correctly. Just like if they had their own payment solution essentially.
How to Rock a Developer Phone Interview
Rose's Law For Quantum Computers
With apologies to Her Majesty, Canada has more progressive banking regulation.
This is a big deal. The FTC will almost certainly investigate it and if it turns out to be as bad as described, will likely take action.

The process might take a while, but they eventually get results. They rely on the public to report incidents:

http://www.ftc.gov/multimedia/video/scam-watch/file-a-compla...

Having multiple people report a claim is good. Also, capturing screenshots etc. of everything you find,since they have a tendency to change and disappear quickly :)
JS implementation of the API, or JS shim over the system API?
Dinner with Peter Thiel and the Exploratorium: an Intern’s Saturday Night
Don't worry; if you wanted to vote a post down, there's probably someone with high enough karma who also wants to downvote the same post.
Exhibit 1: you say "Are there practical applications for proving theorems?"

Exhibit 2: In your profile, you describe yourself as "Machine Learning Expert"

Hmm.
4GB of addressable memory per process is hardly low memory, x32 was recently merged into Linux so I doubt it's going away anytime.
FYI, the state of California has been known to escheat the contents of safe deposit boxes under certain circumstances. It has been known to happen by mistake or in cases where it obviously shouldn't have. If the box is escheated, the papers would be immediately shredded, and the USB keys auctioned off. You'd end up with a few cents from the state (for the USB keys, pennies to the dollar) and absolutely no recourse.

I would highly recommend getting a 2nd safe deposit box with a different bank and store the exact same contents in both (or better, get 3+ total and use m-of-n encryption... but in reality the effort involved would not be practical unless you rarely dip into offline funds).

PS: you're saying I only need to search banks in the bay area for one with that color scheme, floor tile, and banker, then drill/blast the box shown and make off with 90% of Coinbase's deposits in untraceable cash? Free tip #2: change boxes, soon.

[EDIT: that said, I appreciate spreading the word about offline storage. It would have been better to do a blog post (maybe a follow-up?) on how others can do the same thing with Armory running on a live-cd.]
Using industry-standard game libraries (cocos2d/kobold2d) with ARC, a 16 year old would never need to touch reference counting or the CoreFoundation (the exception is using Box2D physics). It is also not necessary to understand copy, assign, and unsafe_unretained, though it certainly might help in some edge-case situations, with which we would be glad to assist any student developers.

And while it is more helpful to know the difference between strong and weak references, that is IMO a very accessible concept.
Software Dev Intern Projects – 2011 | Palantir
I had studied it under a similar approach. Of course, after taking Abstract Algebra course, and seeing Polynomials over Abstract Fields, which form a vector space, while computing the degree of finite field extensions[1], I realized how much powerful Linear Algebra was.

Also during a Computational Complexity course, when we were studying de-randomization techniques, computing the Spectrum of an expander graph[2] and looking into the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the graphs' adjacency matrix to understand topological properties from graphs, I realized how powerful and general Linear Algebra can be.

2d and 3d vectors over the Field of Real Numbers are easy to see, and a good way to get started. But many beautiful and powerful things come from this theory.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_of_a_field_extension

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expander_graph
The UI Design Interview | Palantir
Everyone needs a dose of reality sometimes. And arguments such as these can bring about new ideas and changed perspectives.

These so called "Apple Fans" often seem to have the perspective that Apple's ways are inherently better. It's good to see people showing why it's not better, it's just different.
How to Rock a Systems Design Interview | Palantir
I have not personally used it, but the documentation at http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl/building-and-test... indicates that it is at least capable of running spec2k. I don't know what's complete and what is incomplete. I do know that it is the stated goal of the NaCl project to achieve portability through PNaCl; that alone makes it deserving of mention in this context (https://developers.google.com/native-client/overview#distrib...).
The Coding Interview | Palantir
The computer industry wasn't built on Turing completeness. It's an evolution of practical technology starting with the invention of textile machinery (but you can also kind of argue it started with abacuses or even lines drawn in sand).
Not sure what about this is better than Youtube itself, but I notice a feature called "Leaderboard" which I assume ties into this somehow; can you explain? Sounds like it could be interesting.
This is the first bad thing I've read about Stripe. I was expecting something a lot more special when I checked the article from the link-baity headline. Instead, it's just a bootstrap-style button. And an inline popup that I would never trust to enter my credit card details. Wasted first impression on me.

And The Next Web just dropped another notch on the news sites I trust list. I have to stop clicking those links. Wasn't this the same site that copied someones blog post basically word for word without giving them credit? Quick, check to see if this same story appeared somewhere else first.
More accurately, powerful in terms of extracting taxpayer money to fund mental masturbation for self-entitled people.
I’m Learning Ruby On Rails Because I’m Weak-Willed And Stupid
Take this with a grain of salt because I am surely biased; Objective-C is a great language. I really like the Smalltalk method calling style they've used, and you can still use C to mess with pointers if you know what you are doing. If one learned Objective-C first it shouldn't be that difficult to switch to any other object-oriented language, other than memorizing the order of variables in every method. (Also, retain/release is hardly uncommon and with ARC the programmer can basically act like everything is garbage collected anyway.)

That aside, the price of entry to run on iOS is an excellent objection, as is (to some degree) the lack of code portability. I don't know how simple GNUStep is to get running, but it's certainly not as ubiquitous as all the JVMs.
Logic Puzzle - Gunman and colored dots
Septic Feline - Twenty word puzzles answered by adding an ‘S’
Prefixing 'S' to words to make new ones
looks a lot like http://chartbrain.com
> Someone who has never seen the type of problem that would make a given abstraction useful would not be able to understand it easily.

Whether or not someone is sufficiently motivated to study something should not affect their ability to understand it. Vector spaces and linear maps are actually much easier to understand, and I think that at some point in mathematics (probably your first analysis course) your motivation has to come from the beauty of the theory itself rather than some real-world application.
do you use the rms laptop of choice http://www.lemote.com/en/products/Notebook/2010/0310/112.htm... :)?
Twitter’s New SEO Play: A Profile Directory Of All User Accounts
Yeah, there's pencil pushing frauds (mathemagicians) in machine learning too.
Redesigning the Data Center | October 2012 | Communications of the ACM
The City As Infestation
Firefox has been improving noticeably faster since Chrome came into the picture. Not just lately either. FF has gotten much faster, much less memory hungry, and added a lot of new features (many inspired by chrome).

I find I use both regularly, and which I use by default changes often, depending on the circumstance. E.g. they're both pretty fast these days, but on different things. FF seems more memory efficient overall, but chrome's per-tab-process thing makes it easier to manually reclaim memory by closing a tab (the per-tab-process also probably makes chrome less able to share memory between tabs, so there seems an inherent tradeoff, and explains FF's win here).

So it seems a virtuous cycle, and chrome's to be lauded not only for a great browser, but for heating up the browser race in a way that seems to have resulted in every browser improving.
You keep on asserting that the task -- without domain knowledge of Shannon's theorem -- is solvable by computer. Can you describe how such a computer program would work? I'm unconvinced that the computer program would get a reasonable result before you run out of money paying for it.
The Tyranny of the Clock | October 2012 | Communications of the ACM
Link to Think Stats, the author’s previous book: http://thinkstats.com/
Optar (linked in the comments) looks like an interesting way to archive small amounts of data. Up to 200kB per A4 page. http://ronja.twibright.com/optar/
Francophone Swiss speaking even slower? I can't imagine. (insider French joke)
apps are likely to be published on G Play first, then to 3rd party markets.

If an app is exclusively published on 3rd pary market, then it's likely distributed directly through apk , there's no way to identify them using a centralized way.
He probably means Romansh. It's one of Switzerland's national languages, although only a small minority of the population speaks it.
Learn to code. Get a job.
No :( That's my ideal computer at the moment, though. All I want is Bash, Firefox, and liberty.
On TypeScript, are you seriously asking for warning-annotations? The class syntax is in for ES6, not original to TS. Or do you mean 'interface' as structural type (record width subtyping relation) declaration form?
From zero to coding hero
Often I need to create user guides and demo videos for products, and the screen capture features help a lot.

To capture:

- the entire desktop: Command-Shift-3.
(Automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop)

- part of the desktop: Command-Shift-4

- specific application window: Command-Shift-4

Add Control to these shortcuts to place the screenshot on the clipboard. Also try the bundled Grab utility for more related features.
Warning signs of bad programming
That's completely missing the point: Kids should be introduced to open systems and learn the values it provides me, you and everyone.

Kids should be on platforms where tinkering is allowed and encouraged. This is the way they learn. They should be on platforms where they cannot be "banned" for having fun.

They definitly should not piped directly into a megacorp's cash-pipe from birth only to learn its one platform, its one language used only there and learn skills which only has value inside that megacorp's locked eco-system.

That would be a very stupid and very bad thing to do to a kid.

TLDR: iPhones considered harmful.
Made something similar: http://www.pintube.tv

But, besides the self-promotion, I do agree that youtube's default logged-in feed view could be made a bit more visual and up-to-date with the trend of image-heavy UI's. Can't wait to see what updates they have coming out soon. My friend had a url to their beta UI, but can't remember what it was. Arg.
The Shannon theorem is basically voided by compressive sensing. But all of this (shannon+compressive) was a waste of practical people's time anyway. It's justification for pencil pushers who don't want to do real work.
You don't have a physical book. You bought a license to legally own a duplicate of information. You didn't buy a physical product, or you would have the legal capacity to modify or recreate your product for non-commercial reasons. You don't have the right to redistribute it or duplicate it, so they are complaining about it.

It isn't that much their fault either, since it is inherent human nature and culture to share, and having grotesque IP laws that conflict with what your perceived normalcy is can potentially damage profits!
Thanks, will checkout the Aurora build when I get a chance.
Don't Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Effort
I feel like most, if not all mechanical engineering grads could 3D model something in a CAD system based on a few sketches or clearly written requirements. I had to do it as an undergrad (studied manufacturing). Running a proper CAD system (CATIA, NX, ProEngineer, Solidworks, AutoCAD, etc) is a basic requirement of many traditional engineering jobs.

As for 'additive manufacturing engineer', I don't see that title coming up soon. What are commonly known around here as "3D printers" are more often called "rapid prototypers" in industry. That's about all they're used for-prototyping, not production. Additive processes such as fused deposition modeling aren't able to reach (note even close for the most part) the throughput and detail abilities that other process using the same materials are, such as injection molding or rotomolding. If a company was using 3D printers to make a product they were selling to customers, they are best off selling it for a very high price and making relatively few of them. Otherwise, if they need low per unit costs or large throughputs, there are other ways to make what they need to sell.
This is an excellent book. When I left school, I read it and did a few side projects. That was more than enough to prepare for my interviews.
FWIW, Cory Doctorow's Pirate Cinema is CC licensed and is [legally] available for free from his personal website: http://craphound.com/pc/download/
I'd like to start off by saying thanks for for holding my feet to the fire on this one. It has forced me to rethink what I have written which is almost always a good thing, and in this case I believe it to be good.

What you have made clear to me is that I made a mistake in my interpretation of the OPs post. I had incorrectly assumed that he believed that to become a good programmer that you had to be pessimistic.

What he actually said was (not quoted) in order to be a good programmer he needed to adopt a certain mindset, which was to focus on the negatives. He believes this mindset is slowly making him unhappy because it is constantly reminding him of all the mistakes he made throughout the day, every work day, of every year.

I did overgeneralize his problem, and that was my mistake. I still contend that his problem is temporary and that he should not worry about it as it is a natural part of growing as a developer.

After reading his post a second time I realized something. He doesn't just think of tracking down bugs as focusing on the negatives, but he considers the bugs to be an actual list of his failures. Any bug to him is a failure at any point in development. No wonder he is upset. What is a bug to you? To me a bug in the wild is a huge, huge embarrassment. I feel just awful when one sneaks by. But a bug caught in development is nothing more than a logical typo. If you are a writer and you publish an article incorrectly switching you're with your, or their with there, you would feel dumb. But if it happened while you are burning through your first draft? Is this a failure? No just a minor mistake that you can resolve relatively quickly.

The solution to feeling bad about bugs is not to think positively about bugs, but simply not to worry about them. They will happen, you will catch them, and you will get better. I'd like to elaborate more on how doing nothing will fix the problem. I will probably do so tomorrow even though these comments will probably be dead. Thanks for going back and forth with me, it was fun.
Makes a lot of sense, thanks for sharing!